Alex Garland

Last year, Scribblenauts took everyone by surprise. It went in to E3 as a game with a funny name and it left the show with a staggering amount of buzz. Is there another game like that this year? I doubt it. There’s just going to be too much major news coming out with Project Natal, PlayStation Move and the Nintendo 3DS and big-budget titles such as Gears of War 3, The Last Guardianand the new Zelda sucking up the rest of the oxygen in the room. With everything going on, it could be easy for great game to get lost in the shuffle. With that in mind, here are a couple of promising titles that seem to be flying under the radar:

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West — Ninja Theory’s latest piqued my interest just with its visual style. It’s post-apocalyptic without the dreary brown and biege that seems to dominate developers’ imaginations. Instead of Mad Max, we have something more fantastic. The developer of Heavenly Sword imagines the end of civilization 150 years from now. It’s a place where you can see the remains in the deteriorating skeletons of buildings and bridges. Amid this environment, players will focus on two characters Monkey and Trip who’ll have to help each other out as they try to flee robots that appear to be enslaving humans. Aside from Ninja Theory, there’s a lot of great talent behind the game including Alex Garland, the author of The Beach and scriptwriter for 28 Days Later. I really believe in Garland’s work, and with all due respect to Remedy’s Alan Wake and Red Dead Redemption, this could be one of the best-written games of the year.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective — OK, there’s a trend here. This title is Phoenix Wright creator Shu Takumi’s new game. From what I’ve read, players will essentially be a spirit who can possess objects. The goal of the game is to prevent the deaths of certain people by inhabiting these objects and steer them away from danger. Other than that, I don’t know much else about the game except that it’ll probably be text-heavy and have some of the quirky humor that Takumi’s Phoenix Wright trilogy had.

Red Faction: Armageddon, Devil’s Third and Homefront — I’m comboing these two games for one reason. They’re all being published by THQ. It’s a surprising development for a publisher mostly known for its Pixar games, Saints Row franchise, WWE and UFC fighters. Now with these upcoming games, it seems as though the company is bent on making a name for itself beyond those core games. With Armageddon, THQ is making a big push toward transmedia gaming, where different parts of the universe will appear in different media. Devil’s Third is Tomonobu Itagaki’s new title after he left Team Ninja and started Valhalla Games. Suffice to say, the game looks very slick and very violent. Lastly, Homefront seems to be THQ’s uber shooter based on a scary history where North Korea attacks the United States. The developer behind it, Kaos Studios, did Frontlines: Fuel of War, which means that it’s mostly likely going to be heavy on the multiplayer. But overall, these games have the potential to surprise a lot of folks and maybe turn a few heads at the show.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron — This game came up at the last minute, and the reason I’ve been high on it is because of the people involved, the content and the art style. First off, game director Sawaki Takeyasu and producer Masato Kimura are leading the team. They’ve worked on a few Clover titles such as Okami and Viewtiful Joe. Second, it’s about a fight between heaven and hell, which makes sense if you’ve played Bayonetta (a game by one of the main Clover minds Hideki Kamiya). Lastly, here’s what the game looks like. It’s very stylized but it looks gorgeous.